Marla Maples

A FEW MOMENTS WITH...

Broadway Star, Gay-rights Supporter And Mom-to-be

May 9, 1993

Marla Maples had just ''carbed out,'' she says, ruefully pointing to the empty breakfast plate in her Orlando hotel suite.

No wonder. She was pregnant, but the world didn't know it yet.

Pregnant or not, she shouldn't feel guilty for consuming the extra calories. After all, she's starring in a Broadway show, The Will Rogers Follies, and she needs her energy for all that singing and dancing. Besides, there seem to be plenty of places for calories to hide on 29-year-old Marla, a former high school basketball player whose legs are about as long as vaulter's poles.

She's moving so quickly around her Orlando hotel suite, chatting with visitors while trying to get ready for a benefit appearance, that her gold high-heeled sandals are sliding along the floor as if she were skating. She's worried her curls won't hold, but they'll have to do. She's so sorry there are dirty dishes lying around, and that her press release isn't ready yet.

She flops onto a couch, letting out a giggle and a sigh.

''OK, I'm ready,'' she says.

We talk about how tired we both are. She was delayed in Newark because of awful weather and didn't arrive in Orlando until late the night before. I had been up all night at Cape Canaveral covering a shuttle launch.

''You don't look it,'' she says to me, staring at my face closely.

''It's makeup,'' I say.

''Yeah,'' she says with a giggle. ''What would we do without it?''

Maples says she is a careful dieter, stressing the importance of a healthy relationship between body and mind. But maintaining her looks and planning future projects such as a talk show and a sitcom are only part of what she says she's about.

A devout Christian and former honor student, Maples says she is concerned about gay rights. in fact, she canceled a holiday trip to Colorado last January because of an anti-gay rights act passed in that state. She's also concerned about homelessness. the reason she's in Orlando to is promote a program for homeless children sponsored by Embassy Suites Resort Lake Buena Vista.

Maples leaves her private suite and enters the hotel lobby where she's about to make a speech. The crowd becomes quiet as people nudge each other and stare. Soon, though, they realize she's accessible. Her head snaps back and forth in response as people call her name.

Women and children get caught up in her infectious friendliness as she plays a game of hoops with boys who come up to her knees. (She can look down into the goal). Men, temporarily rooted to the floor, smile senselessly, as she rapidly passes the basketball from hand-to-hand, then behind her back and between her legs like a Harlem Globetrotter in a miniskirt and high heels.

Although her charisma is as obvious as her molasses Southern drawl, back in her hotel suite, she says it's not easy to be in the spotlight. Especially when the world first got to know her as the woman dating Donald Trump, while he was still married to Ivana.

Maples was working as a model and actress in New York when they met through friends. Later the two kept running into each other on the street.

''Finally we stopped and said, 'What's going on?' We caught each other doing a double take . . . and said this is really odd that we keep seeing each other . . . right on Madison Avenue.''

She said Donald and Ivana were in the process of splitting up at the time she and Donald started dating about 4 years ago. ''I was sort of like going, 'When you're through, call me.' ''

Still, she feels a bit guilty about being involved with Trump while he was married. ''Getting involved with someone who was already married . . . it's not a good situation. . God gives you little lessons. And I judged people so strongly before I got involved with him. It's amazing how those things you judge the most are sometimes the things that eventually end up happening to you.''

''It was the hardest thing I have ever gone through.''

The Will Rogers Follies, she says, has been good. She has found friends, has somewhat of a new public identity, feels like she's part of a group, making a contribution.

Although the press has grown kinder over time and response to her performance as the head cowgirl has been positive, she still deals with hostility, such as a letter she received from a woman who wrote that Maples had no right to be on Broadway, that she should quit the show and let someone who had paid their dues have the part.

''I've had days when really I just couldn't get myself up out of the corner. I was just sobbing. I am a big believer in the power of prayer. I think sometimes . . . the only thing that's going to pull you through is connecting with the higher power of God.''

She was pregnant (the father is the 46-year-old Trump) during our interview, although I'm not sure she knew it yet. I certainly didn't. But I asked her whether she ever planned to have kids.

''Yeah. It's something I've never really felt like I have to do now, but it's always been out there. I love children.''.